The City’s Plans To Replace Our Fallen Trees

To the dismay of nature lovers, many of our neighborhood’s oldest trees were uprooted and had to be cut down after Sandy. Residents who see these green giants as a major part of our neighborhood landscape wrote in asking what the city will do to replant the trees.

We spoke to Andrew Newman, the Program Manager for MillionTreesNYC to ask about the future of our trees.

According to Newman, his organization has received more than 20,000 notifications through the City’s 311 information and reporting system and the Parks website regarding uprooted trees. Staff members have been working 12 hour days to meet the needs of each affected area.

“We have actually completed the task for inspecting all uprooted trees throughout the city (including size, species, location, and condition) through our internal Forestry Management database via our official inspections. We do plan to replant these trees wherever possible using existing capital funds associated with MillionTreesNYC,” said Newman.

The group, working alongside Con Edison, the Parks’ Central Forestry division, Parks Borough Forestry divisions and other city and federal agencies to complete over 6,600 work orders to deal with the fallen trees.

Unfortunately, according to Newman, not all trees will be replanted as they were before.

“As you may know, the previous existence of a street tree does not necessarily guarantee that it can be replanted at the same location,” said Newman.

After the staff at MillionTreesNYC finish the task of removing all of the fallen trees, they will move to the next phase of their operations which will be to replace as many trees as possible.